Thanks to Jane Hart for drawing our attention to this interesting little tool. The calculator has been around for a couple of years, but it’s now back in a new version. This latest edition allows users to generate a PDF of their report so they can share findings with colleagues and help put the ‘learning footprint’ into the business case for a greater use of web conferencing and other forms of elearning.
Archive for July, 2009
So what exactly is a webinar?
Posted by clive on 29th July 2009You might think it’s obvious – a webinar is, of course, a web seminar. But what is a seminar? I typed ‘define:seminar’ into Google hoping to get some clarification:
- Any meeting for an exchange of ideas.
- A course offered for a small group of advanced students.
- A form of academic instruction.
- A class that has a group discussion format rather than a lecture format.
- Lecture and dialogue allowing participants to share experiences in a particular field under the guidance of an expert discussion leader.
- Informal discussion and analysis of intellectual material in small groups.
How about the Oxford Concise Dictionary?
- A small class at a university, etc. for discussion and research.
- A short intensive course of study.
- A conference of specialists.
Some characteristics come through clearly from these definitions:
- That a seminar is a learning event.
- That, although a seminar may well include an element of lecture/presentation, interactivity, typically in the form of discussion, is also important (see the words I have italicised).
- That a seminar is likely to be pitched at an advanced/specialised audience.
So, that’s a seminar. But to what extent are these characteristics carried through into the typical webinar? Well, in many cases, very well – a web seminar is exactly what you get. But of course, sometimes the objective is only superficially a learning one – the real purpose is to familiarise you with a product or service, or to enhance the reputation of a consultant or supplier. It’s marketing dressed as education. I’m not implying that this makes the session any less ‘pure’ or ‘ethical’, just that it only partially meets the definition of a seminar.
It’s also possible that a webinar will include little or no discussion, or any other form of interaction for that matter. Essentially, it’s a lecture/presentation, just like you’ll see at a conference. There may well be a learning objective for the presentation, but the event is certainly not instructional. If learning does takes place, it is because the participant is grabbed by the content of the presentation and is prepared to take it forward in some way – just as this can happen when you read a book, listen to a radio broadcast or watch a TV documentary.
Although a webinar clearly can have a learning purpose, I still believe it is useful to distinguish this from a full-on, virtual classroom session. Just as there’s a clear distinction between a conference and a training course in the bricks and mortar world, there’s the same difference when you move online. It is almost impossible to conceive of a virtual classroom session that is not interactive and that doesn’t have a clear educational/training purpose. It’s the world of the teacher/trainer rather than the lecturer/presenter. And whereas a webinar can have any number of participants, a virtual classroom will only work with small numbers.
For that reason, at onlignment, we make a clear separation between the webinar and the virtual classroom. They require different skills and obey different rules.
Mixing media: happiness or headache?
Posted by clive on 23rd July 2009We are fortunate in that our brain is able to focus on verbal and visual inputs simultaneously. Although these inputs are likely to be linked, i.e. the verbal input often relates directly to the visual in some way, different parts of the brain are used to process these two channels. Where we are less fortunate is that the brain finds it uncomfortable to deal with more than one verbal input or more than one visual input at a time.
As a facilitator in a web conferencing environment, we have two main ways in which we can provide verbal input – using our voice or using text on slides. We also have more than one way of communicating visually, the most common being the graphics that we display on slides and (if we’re lucky) a real-time video feed of us presenting.
Happpiness for the participant means:
- you present using your voice, while you display a graphic;
- you display text on the screen, keeping quiet while they read it;
- you present using a video feed, but with no accompanying slide.
It’s headache time for the participant when:
- you talk over a slide full of text (the participant doesn’t know whether to listen or read; because they can do the latter much faster than the former, they’ll probably tune out what you’re saying);
- you run a video alongside a sequence of pictorial slides (not such a disaster, but chances are your video image will draw more attention than the graphics, because it’s moving).
These rules might seem common sense, but they can’t be, because they’re commonly broken. The result? Presenters communicating happily, participants with headaches. Not a formula for success.
So how important really is body language?
Posted by clive on 21st July 2009Conventional wisdom, i.e. that which is passed along without question, has for some time been that body language generates more than half of the meaning in face-to-face communication. This idea never seemed to make any sense to me, but it was always conveyed as science, so I was prepared to accept it, albeit reluctantly.
For anyone using web conferencing (unless you’re lucky enough to be using video), the absence of body language cues was therefore seen as a major obstacle – even with two-way voice communication, you’d be missing more than half the action. So, it was some relief to see this entertaining video from Creativity Works on what they call The Mehrabian Myth.
So, another piece of pop psychology bites the dust. We seem to be entering a second age of enlightenment.
The technology is ready. Are you?
Posted by barry on 15th July 2009I recently read this excellent post over on The Webinar Blog, considering some of the difficulties involved with the use of Voice over IP (VoIP). I would encourage you to read Ken’s post, and I agree with most of what he says in as much as they’re all real issues, but I can’t help feeling that the root of the problem isn’t being addressed.
None of the issues raised are really about VoIP itself, which is a relatively mature and very usable technology. Internet speeds are continually increasing, and the quality achievable with VoIP is at least as good as a regular telephone.
As is so often the case with technology solutions, the real issue is with the implementation. Too often, the implementation is considered a success once the software has been rolled out across the organisation. In fact this is when the real work should begin.
Employees must be provided with the right equipment; if you want to use VoIP, make sure they have good quality headsets. Ensure that every user knows how to set up and use that equipment. Despite what vendors tell you, none of the tools are so intuitive that people can be expected to use them without some support and training. Invest the time at this point to check that everything technical works, and I do mean everything. Set up a pre-recorded webinar and get every user to log in and make sure they can navigate through it and that their audio and video works. This is a much simpler thing to deal with if you plan for it and ramp up your helpdesk support for the testing period. It’s certainly easier than trying to deal with the issue on an ad-hoc basis once someone is supposed to be taking part in a live session.
Even with this much better level of implementation, it still pays to have a fallback for every session that is being run. If you’re using VoIP, always make sure there is an alternative conference call number available. When a problem does occur, you don’t want to waste valuable time trying to fix it if you can provide everyone with an alternative.
The tools are there to make communication easier, and they do work. Let’s make sure that we invest the time in making sure our people really have what they need to use the tools effectively.
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Death by webinar – what a way to go
Posted by clive on 15th July 2009In his excellent CogDog blog (how crazy does that sound?), Alan Levine reflects on some really horrific webinar experiences he has had. He sets out his Five ways to run a deadly online seminar
- Make it hard to even get inside.
- Don’t let your participants know who else is there.
- Make it hard or impossible for the audience to communicate with each other.
- Don’t greet the audience or make them feel welcome.
- Ignore your audience, make ‘em wait ’til you fill the hour with your voice, do not involve them at all.
Thanks Alan for some great tips for truly terrible webinars.
Have you got any webinar horror stories you’d like to share? We’d love to hear.
Does the design of online training or communication need up-front analysis?
Posted by phil on 13th July 2009I have been thinking about how much up-front analysis needs to go into the planning of webinars, live online training or presentations. You know the old chestnut, “Fail to plan and you plan to fail”. Another cliche that springs to mind is, “What gets measured is what gets done.”
So if someone asked me to design or deliver a live session online, I’d expect to find the answers to some fundamental questions.
Here is the set of questions I’d ask. Although I’m offering it to you as a template, that does not mean it has to be superstitiously documented. You might think of the answers as stages in a thought process rather than paragraphs in a document.
Project setup questions for live online training and communication
Project Goals – Why are we thinking of doing a live online session? How will we know when it’s been a success?
Deliverables – What are the tangible things it will deliver – for example one, or a series of webinars with support material of various kinds?
Scope – Who is going to take part, where, in what numbers and how many times will it be repeated? What or who will be excluded?
Business Case – Is the cost of the solution more or less than the cost of the problem – what will it cost and what is the value of the business benefit it will recover, over what period?
Roles and responsibilities – who has the power and authority from the client’s side to make things happen or stop them? What resources and people will the project need and why?
Risks – What might stop the session(s) from being successful? How likely is that/those risks to materialise, how serious would the consequences be, and what can you do to forestall them?
Assumptions/Constraints – For example, can you be certain all users will have a favourable environment, IT setup and hardware in order to play a full part?
Controls – How will you know that the sessions have been planned and run in a way that pleases all stakeholders? What success measures will you monitor?
Reporting framework – Who needs to be informed or consulted about what and when?
Sign off – Who “signs the cheque” and who else has to agree to the plan for creation and execution?
I also think that in an adult world in which business imperatives rule, everyone has an interest in how the enterprise is spending its hard-earned dosh. So I’d include some things you might find surprising in a set of joining instructions for a live online event run in-house. Once again I’d stress that these sentiments might be no more than stages in the thought process, which help to shape the language and tone of communications as you advertise and market the seminar. It all rather depends upon an organisation’s culture and the role and seniority of the persons being invited to join. In other words, it’s a judgment call, but if you don’t have a good process than it won’t matter what you decide.
Here’s my starter for ten:
Template for what to include in joining instructions and briefings
Background – what the sessions will be, why they are important and where they fit into the general scheme of organisational or personal development.
Purpose – the specific beneficial outcomes of the session(s) in terms of business or personal goals and objectives.
Content – the broad areas of content the session(s) will cover.
Objectives/Expected Outcomes/Outputs – the entry requirements, objectives, expected outcomes, and outputs.
Audience – who it’s for – and for whom the messages, materials and activities have been made to match.
Resources, Team and Materials – what you need before, during and after the session, where to obtain the information or equipment and whom to contact in case of queries.
Methods/Dynamics – learning and communication stategies the session will use, for example what you’ll need (notebook, instruments), how you’ll interact with the presenter(s) and other participants, any ‘rules of engagement’, and the effort or self-control that’s expected of a participant.
Logistics – the IT configuration, hardware, software and telephony you’ll need to take part, together with how much uninterrupted time you’ll need and whether there is any associated cost.
Date – sufficient advance notice.
Contact – a point of contact with email/phone.
Order of proceedings – an agenda showing who, what and when, etc.
We’ve shown you ours, so please don’t be shy about showing us yours!
We’re always interested in alternative viewpoints and in better and more elegant ways of doing things.
So what does make webinars effective?
Posted by phil on 13th July 2009Dave Ferguson responds to Clive’s posting So are webinars effective? by saying you must know what effective is before you can measure it!
I have a good deal of sympathy for Dave’s views. Survey after survey seems to show that organisations seldom measure the effectiveness of training no matter how it is mediated. As he points out, it is easy to compare direct costs and opportunity costs, but that is a long way from measuring the value added in terms of performance improvement or individual growth and the development of potential.
For certain, many webinars are boring didactic lectures. You find them in organisations where previously folk thought you could make a document interactive by digitising it and adding a few navigational icons and links. The token interactivity of which you speak is much in evidence in virtual classrroms,and the pastiches you quote must feel uncomfortably real to many.
Dave is not alone in saying you say one must first think about what effectiveness means, before you can measure it. A similar debate is under way through one of the L&D forums on LinkedIn. There the premise is that the criterion-referenced model of Robert F Mager and Peter Pipe no longer has relevance in the world of e-learning. The argument FOR seems to be that no business in the 21st century has the time or resources to waste on analysis and conceiving of a matched solution. The call to arms is, “Be swift and light on your feet because things move fast and it is important to create rapid responses which may be destined to have a very short shelf life”.
In my view that may be characteristic of businesses which are destined to have a very short shelf life! The point of Mager’s work is that learning is only one performance improvement strategy amongst many. We would do well to adopt the same stance when we are thinking of mounting a webinar, whether it be for sales, marketing, information, transfer of knowledge or skills, or anything else for that matter. We should let the old unfashionable process of front-end analysis be our spur and get back into the habit of asking (or at the very least mentally processing) those good old simple questions:
- Why do you have webinars on your mind right now, i.e. what seems to be the need, what or who wants something new or different to happen or who has asked for training in this area?
- How real is the need in your estimation?
- What effect is this having on the business, team or individuals?
- What is that effect costing the organisation?
- Who most of all needs training / communication?
- What are they doing at the moment, i.e. how are they performing, how is their success judged, how is their performance measured, how does that compare with how they ought to be doing?
- Who must provide support for them to succeed?
- Who else is involved in their success (or failure)?
- What else might you do apart from training / communicating?
- What might get in the way of your solving this problem?
- How will you know your solution has been a success, i.e. what is the ultimate objective of your solution?
- What have you tried in the past as a remedy for this (type of) issue?
- What works for your people and culture?
- What happens if you do nothing at all, i.e what will happen if we don’t conduct the webinars?
Top ten webinar best practices
Posted by clive on 10th July 2009Osterman Research has recently released the results of their research, sponsored by Citrix Online, into best practices for webinars. They make ten recommendations:
- Use guest speakers
- Hold rehearsals
- Promote well in advance
- Find out about your audience and adapt to their needs
- Send invitations 1 to 2 weeks in advance
- Limit to one hour
- Leave time for Q&A
- Use polls
- Conduct product demonstrations (presumably where relevant)
- Conduct post-event surveys
You can download the report from Citrix here.
The report makes some simple but important points and provides useful initial guidance. We’ll be building on these ideas and putting our own unique perpsective forward on the topic over the coming months.
Brain rules for the virtual classroom
Posted by clive on 2nd July 2009Recently I conducted an in-depth review of John Medina’s book Brain Rules for my personal blog, Clive on Learning. I took my time over this because John’s analysis of the applications of neuroscience to education and training was so far-reaching. I looked at each of John’s rules in turn, assessing the implications for workplace learning in general. The purpose of this post is to explore the ideas in a more restricted context, the facilitation of virtual classrooms.
For each rule, click on the link to see the original posting.
So we learn much more effectively when we’re on the move. Implications for the virtual classroom? I would imagine it’s impractical for participants to use a mouse and headset when exercising, so I’d probably keep sessions short and encourage participants to exercise in the breaks. Some chance.
Without good facilitation, there is a risk of relationships breaking down, perhaps because one person tends to dominate or behave aggressively.The implication for the virtual classroom is to choose facilitators carefully for their empathetic ability and then provide them with the training they need to handle problems diplomatically and sensitively. Given you can’t see your learners, how do you pick up on potential problems? How do you deal with a difficult participant without embarassing them in front of their peers?
All learners are different and that makes it hard for the facilitator of any live session to ensure every participant achieves their objectives. In the virtual classroom that means keeping class sizes small, so facilitators stand a better chance of understanding and reacting to the differences inherent in every learner. It could mean running special sessions forlearners that are behind the pack. It also places a premium on the use of polls and other survey tools that provide you with more information about the group you’re working with.
You’ll achieve nothing if you haven’t captured the attention of your audience. The best way to capture attention is with an emotionally-arousing experience of some sort – perhaps an anecdote, a surprising fact, a scenario, an activity – that is relevant to the point you will be making.
Even if you do manage to capture the audience’s attention, you’ll have lost it within 10 minutes if you don’t stimulate a fresh emotional arousal. In the virtual classroom it will make sense to start with an overview and provide regular progress updates. And in each 10 minute block, concentrate on a single key point.
If you want people to remember something, make sure they understand it. Facilitators should make liberal use of relevant, real-world examples.
Retrieval works best when the environmental conditions at retrieval mimic the environmental conditions at encoding. If this is true, then the most effective environment in which to learn would be on-the-job, which for many virtual classroom participants will be where they will be!
A key lesson here is to present important information repeatedly over time, elaborating on it as you do so. Where possible, build on the learner’s prior knowledge, rather than presenting new information in isolation. Provide opportunities for reflection and/or discussion immediately following the session, perhaps using an asynchronous medium, such as a forum.
So, getting the right amount of sleep is critical to the brain’s functioning, including learning; we differ in how much sleep we need and this varies at different times in our lives; we could all do with a nap in the afternoon. The implications for the virtual classroom? Well, perhaps you should avoid sessions mid-afternoon. You might also find that some participants take advantage of the fact that you can’t seethem to catch up on their sleep during particularly boring sessions!
There’s no real harm in a a learning intervention causing a little stress in learners, so long as this is very moderate and short-lived. A small degree of peer pressure would be a good example. What we don’t want is to stress our learners out. I reckon that a great many classroom events, particularly those that are highly interactive, stress out learners too much because the degree of peer pressure is too high – the learner may be terrified of embarrassing themselves. Live events may also be stressful because they attempt to cover too much information too quickly and the learner simply cannot keep up.
Medina draws heavily on the work conducted by Richard Mayer on the link between multimedia and learning. At the most simple level, Mayer concluded that “students learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.” Facilitators of virtual classroom events should try to avoid the most common sins, i.e. delivering two sources of verbal information simulataneously (typically voice and a lot of text on the screen) or two visual sources (say graphics and video). The brain can only comfortably pay attention to one visual and one verbal channel at a time.
Visual aids are not an optional extra; they are usally helpful and sometimes essential. It does matter what pictures you use – different types of information require different types of visuals to convey meaning most clearly. While more abstract information is harder to convey pictorially, it is worth the effort. However, better no picture than one that just fills a space and conveys an inappropriate meaning.
This may be the case, but I struggle to find any implications for the virtual classroom facilitator. In many cases, you can only tell who’s male and who’s female by the name on the participant list.
When it comes to more formal learning interventions, we sometimes seem to conspire to minimise the possibilities for exploration and reflection – the dominant strategy continues to be structured instruction, regardless of the suitability to the requirement. Guided discovery is more engaging and more rewarding, particularly when the participants have plenty of experience to draw upon and share. Probably learners would like a balance between the two. They appreciate the opportunities to reflect and explore, particularly collaboratively, but they also quite like to be able to draw upon expert experience from time to time. This is entirely an issue of pedagogy – virtual classrooms are neutral on this issue and can support each approach equally.
